Nina Beety info on EMF’s and Cells installation in Monterey

Bruce,

Last Wednesday, Verizon/ExteNet Systems pulled 12 of the 13 small cell towers they’d applied for in Monterey. The only one left is the one in front of my house. On Thursday, at a packed marathon Planning Commission hearing, the PC unanimously denied the cell tower. City staff says ExteNet is appealing the denial.

The video of the 3/15/18 meeting is now up. It was from 6 pm until after 12 am. Public comment started about 9 o’clock.

People had made a full-scale model of all the equipment on a pole and brought it into the city council chambers where it stood through the entire meeting – very effective.

A primary issue is: is there a significant gap in coverage? There is none in Monterey. Even a consultant brought in showed there was coverage. Residents had collected a lot of evidence and posted two videos to YouTube. We repeatedly hammered that there is no coverage gap. That is what is protected by federal rules and court cases. The company is fighting for capacity, and trying to make capacity equal coverage.

Also, there were errors in the reports, including false statements that most of the 13 were omnidirectional antennas. Only 4 were omnidirectional, the rest were directional. At the original hearing, people asked the real purpose of these antennas, and why were they pointing west, into the woods and unpopulated areas.

Drawing the azimuths of the antennas on a map showed that they all pointed toward Pebble Beach – see attached (these are just some of the macro towers there)– pointing at macro towers in PB.. The U.S. Open is coming to PB in 2019, and small cells can offload capacity from macro towers. The room roared when the map was shown.

It takes a team of people to fight these antennas, to be able to spot technical errors and staff factual errors in city and county staff reports. Every single deviation from the general plan and zoning ordinances, including the wireless ordinance, should be spelled out. Here, people wrote up all the deviations, violations, and errors, and then divided it up into 3 minute comments. So much information was put into the record that way, and the Planning Commission had so much information and so many points on which to deny.

Only public uproar will stop these towers. Each tower has to be fought as if it is going everywhere. They’ve been creeping in SC County. 13 applications in a residential neighborhood really put it on the map here for outrage.

Marilyn (Garrett) has found that the ones in SC may not be posted as required; she’s found no signs at places she’s visited. That is a violations of city or county rules and, I think, the Brown Act. There must be proper noticing.